ODDO BHF - Future of Food / October 2022

Performance in October
After a bumpy start, stock markets ended October on a positive note. Developed market equities registered a positive 7% performance, even though emerging market equities fell 3%, with Chinese indices coming under pressure. Bond yields continued to push higher supported by hawkish actions from central banks. The combination of high inflation and solid labor markets led the ECB to announce a rate hike of 75 bps that will most probably be followed by the Fed in early November. The Q3 earnings season has been mixed so far with a large number of companies issuing warnings and pessimist outlooks for 2023.
In this context, the strategy outperformed the broader market led by Consumer Staples and Industrials. The returns in October were +10.3% in CHF, +8.5% in USD and +7.5% in EUR
 
Positioning
We continued to increase the weight of our US bucket after initiating two new positions, one in water management and the other one in food distribution. In order to finance those new names, we took some profit in stocks that rallied after publishing strong numbers.
 
Movements
Major sales - reductions: General Mills, Dollar General
Major purchases - increases: Costco, Lindsay
 
Outlook
The first earning reports we had in our portfolio showed that food buyers are accepting higher prices while keeping the volume of purchases broadly flat. This is a really good sign of the strengths of the consumer particularly in the US. On the short term, our portfolio will be influenced by the rest of the earning seasons. Longer term, we believe that the economic outlook remains uncertain, with the energy crisis being the main challenge for this winter. As a result, the portfolio will keep its defensive stance specially via our long position on US consumer staples.
 
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